GAP: In response to a partial World Health Organization (WHO) call for action – to suspend the sale of live mammals in food markets – PETA is appointing PETA Asia Director Jason Baker to the agency’s executive board.
With Expert Baker, perhaps we can make intelligent and timely security decisions.
PETA, PETA Asia and our other affiliates have conducted research and we know that future zoonotic diseases cannot be prevented by restricting the sale of only live mammals in food markets. Didn’t bird flu teach the world anything? These are not only mammals and not only food markets – the sale of birds, reptiles and fish; fur farms; and roadside zoos are at risk – no, let probability– products of the next pandemic.
As long as markets for animals are open and operational, the animals suffer and no one is safe.
On March 25, 2020, PETA President Ingrid Newkirk sent an urgent letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhan Ghebreyesus:
We are reaching out to you urgently because while the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic remains unpredictable, one thing is certain: Live meat markets will continue to place the world’s humankind at enormous risk. On behalf of PETA and over 6.5 million of our members and supporters around the world, we respectfully ask you to call for the immediate and permanent closure of these markets, which are rife with dangerous viruses and other pathogens.
Now, more than a year later, and after nearly 3 million deaths from COVID-19 worldwide, WHO is finally taking action for live animal markets like the one in which the new coronavirus is believed to have originated. But here the agency has come to a halt too quickly: it is only urging countries to suspend the sale of “live caught wild mammals for food or breeding purposes” and to close food markets that sell live wild mammals as an emergency measure if not proven. there are effective rules and adequate risk assessment ”. But, as Newkirk said back in May, “for all the other species sold and killed in them – and for the survival of the human species itself” –everything animal markets should be closed…
Prior to the lackluster call to action by the WHO, PETA also issued a warning of action, signed by more than 162,000 people, urging the agency to close live animal markets worldwide; create a “blood-soaked” live animal market ”outside WHO headquarters in Washington, DC, and urge the agency to personally close all live animal markets on a permanent basis; and, with the help of Slaughter Free NYC, exposed abhorrent conditions in poorly regulated live animal markets in the States, such as New York. Across the pond, PETA UK held its own protest in front of the WHO office in Copenhagen, echoing our call for a complete ban on the live animal market. And PETA Asia conducted research on live animal markets in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as follow-up investigations in Thailand and Indonesia months after the pandemic began, which confirmed that bloody, dirty markets were still operating in business as usual, despite the growing death toll from COVID-19. PETA Asia noted during its investigation that wild as well as not a mammal the animals were sold and they still posed a threat of spreading disease – plus, these animals are at risk of disease (remember, for example, the 1.3 million chickens that Sweden announced that it would “cull” or kill after it was reportedly became the epicenter of an avian influenza outbreak in Europe just a few months ago).
Call on WHO to call for the closure of all live animal markets
Do not wait for someone or anyone else to protect you or the animals with whom we must live in harmony. You can act right now to prevent the next global pandemic: give up meat, eggs and dairy products –Become a vegan… And help others you know to do the same. Feed them a vegan meal and they will never go back to their truly messy dietary habits.